Sasha says- Answer facebook questions about Otekaike vs Otiake - a podcast by Whitestone Geopark

Waitaki whitestone geopark Geo-educator, Sasha, answered a Facebook enquiry about what the limestone is actually called, Otekaike or Otiake.

Transcript:

Radio Announcer: Time to talk Geopark and joined by the Geopark Educator Sasha Morriss. Now, you've had a question come in via the website, Sasha.

Geoeducator: That's right. Yeah, it actually came in on our Facebook page. We had a group of kids from Duntroon School out with Sophie Briggs, one of our Geoeducators with the School Rocks. She took the kids out on a really exciting field trip. They went to several sites and they looked at some limestone. And you can look at the photos on our Facebook page. And one of the questions came in querying what the limestone is actually called. Now we've referred to it on our Facebook page as Otekaike. And the query was, shouldn't it be called Otiake? So we how do we look into that? And I discuss that with Sophie. And, um, just to clarify things, what's happened in the past with geology is you've had all this fascinating work go on and it's been quite disjointed. So previously where limestone, or any rock for that matter, was found, it was called by its provincial name. So you end up with rocks being of the same formation, deposited in the same environment, around the same time, but it will be called different names. Now, this gets confusing when you start looking at geology in a regional context because you think you've ended up with lots of different formations. So there was a paper written back in 1957 by a guy called Gage, and he made the judgment call that all of this limestone in the Waitaki district is actually all of the same geological time period from Duntroonian right up to Waitakian in age. So he suggested that all limestone that was deposited during that time period is to be called Otekaike. Now, this is to allow people to correlate between different areas easily. So you don't have the confusion of different provincial names. So Sophie was correct and the person that wrote in was correct, they're the same thing, just a different name - Otekaike Limestone. So that's what we find, all of our fossils in. That's what was deposited in the Waitaki area around about 25 million years ago in very shallow seawater, about 50 to 100 meters depth.

Radio Announcer: So it's not actually Oamaru Stone. It's what we find and we know as Oamaru Stone is actually the same all over the district.

Geoeducator: Yes, it's right. What we know is Oamaru Stone is actually - it's official name is Otekaike Limestone. That's correct.

Radio Announcer: Thanks very much, Sasha. We'll catch up with you again next week.

Geoeducator: Look forward to it, buy now.

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